When Public Records aren't Public Records, The Citizens Lose and a Little Politics

The Blog

C. M. Ambrose, Jr.

The race for the 3rd Congressional District is a now less than a year away, the midterms.  While the Democrats had something to cheer about this past Tuesday night with sweeps in several states, and victories that were referendums on the President.  The most amazing thing to me personally as I watch the 3rd Congressional District race begins to start up is the fact that the incumbent only has $57,480  cash on hand as of 9/30/17.  Three days after the public announcement by Democrat Dr. Phillip Conner, my household got a Higgins mailing and have received several calls in past week about phone town halls, so the race is on.  Republican Josh Guillory, a Lafayette attorney, and veteran has $48,183, Dr. Phillip Conner has $40,000 on hand.  These numbers are from Opensecrets.org. The three other declared candidates, Verone Thomas(D), Larry Rader(D) and Christopher Vidrine, have not filed their paperwork yet, but like the other candidates, they have been speaking to groups and organizations in Acadiana for months. The first of my interviews with the candidates opened the new season of the podcast "The Back Porch Experience" this past week.  I had the opportunity to have a conversation with Dr. Phillip Conner at his office and you can hear that conversation HERE. 

Dr.Phillip Conner(D)or

Candidate 3rd Congressional District

CPSB

There are no questions as to the state of the education system in this parish. The problems of the Calcasieu Parish School System is not the students, teachers, in most cases not the principals, or even the parents.  It's the Administration and the CPSB members for the most part. Someone accused me of hating teacher, both of my parents were teachers, my respect and admiration for them are endless. There many hardworking and wonderful teachers out there who are being put under tremendous amounts of stress, while being underpaid, at the same time,. While others in the system (central office) make nice salaries with no accountability and face none of the stress.  Teachers around the parish get up and go to work every day knowing that no day is going to be easy, but every day they do it. You learn that if you come from a family of educators, they do it because they love it, it certainly isn't the pay. The teachers here have to do it with the knowledge that the person in charge of their career, doesn't even know what they are facing or what goes on because they have no background in education and no classroom experience. They can offer no help to them professionally, and if they are a minority, the record speaks for itself here in Calcasieu and especially under this administration. When you spend $80,000 on a law firm to get out or try to get out of a court order only to find out from that firm's report, "that you aren't even close to Unitary Status" one has to wonder if you have every child's best interest at heart.

A school district is unitary when it has eliminated the effects of past segregation to the extent practicable. When courts declare a school system unitary, the court system no longer supervises the school system's student assignment and other decisions.

The Supreme Court announced the most comprehensive list of items that lower courts had to examine in evaluating whether districts achieved unitary status in Green v. County School Board of New Kent County (1968). These six factors address the composition of a student body, faculty, staff, transportation, extracurricular activities, and facilities. School boards that seek unitary status must prove that officials implemented their desegregation orders in good faith, that their plans were effective in eliminating all vestiges of school segregation to the extent practicable under the Green factors, and that they have not violated the U.S. Constitution subsequent to the original judicial decrees.       Excerpt from Education Law, "Dual and Unitary Systems.  The whole article HERE.

The people deserve an explanation, not following court orders and then trying to circumvent them.  The citizens and taxpayers deserve transparency, as stakeholders in the system the teachers deserve transparency. There is no transparency when it comes to the CPSB, the administration isn't even transparent with the board, much less the citizens they represent.  While school board members shoulder some of the blame, the true blame lies in the leadership of the school system. While citizens understand that this was the Superintendent the board inherited, he works for them, they represent the people of Calcasieu Parish. How can you take care of the interest of the people you were elected by if you don't understand the process?  Each board member should be required to have in-service-training so that they can understand the complex issues and large amounts of money they are entrusted with.  They should be able to understand a budget, There is an election coming up in which the CPSB administration is asking for a new tax, but before I get to that let's address some other things that every tax paying citizen should consider.

Does anyone know what the attorney representing the Superintendent makes? What's his running billable tab YTD? Compared to the last yr? Anything?

Let's talk about the evaluation that was spoken about at the last school board meeting, from what I have been able to gather is that the superintendent does a "self-evaluation" of his job performance.  School board members usually submit an evaluation of the Superintendent which is given to the Superintendent and he reads them. Back to the "self-evaluation" for right now.

If the Superintendent does or has done, an evaluation of himself, that document in is 'Public Document' and should be made public.  By virtue of the minutes, this should be made available to the citizens of Calcasieu Parish.

The evaluation is a reflection of the progress the Superintendent with moving the school district forward and is done by him, thus, should be public. The public should also know how their individual school board member evaluated the Superintendent to see if they reflect how the people that voted them in feel.

 School grades can be found HERE

American Press/CPSB article HERE

After attending just two meetings of the CPSB several things became very clear:

1.  There are some members of the CPSB that don't realize The Administration and the Superintendent work for them, not the other way around.
2. The Superintendent at times is evasive, for example, when you're asked a question by a board member and your response is" Well you signed off on it" leads many to believe that the board member was either deceived or didn't read the material given, either way not good for the taxpayers of the parish.
3. There is no real training for new board members, in-service on all aspects of being a school board member should be in place to protect the citizens' interest. The training given is not relevant and doesn't help members development.
4. Some of the members of the board have no idea what they are doing, or either doesn't read or can't understand the information presented by the administration.
5. Citizens have NO LEGAL REPRESENTATION IN AFFAIRS OF THE SCHOOL BOARD.      The board members don't have the legal counsel to consult on matters with the administration and their attorney when they disagree or have questions concerning the legality of things.
6. There needs to be term limits on the school board, this becomes evident when certain board members open their statements over and over with the phrase, "I've been on the board a long time".  
7. $150 million dollars has been spent on the western part of the parish according to board member Billy Breaux.
8. The program that the administration wants to implement to save the failing schools and get a grant for, portions of that plan have been tried and failed. 
9. There still are problems with institutional controls. (See Fees and Copiers below)
10. Each school leases copiers, from different vendors, they don't even know how many copies and where they are, listen to the discussion below about fees.
11. Sometimes it seems as if some members are in total confusion on what's being discussed at the time and what's being voted on by the board. 
12. It's probably cheaper and cost-effective in the long run to purchase copiers and purchase service contracts.At least that way the school board will have something they don't have now, knowledge of how many and where every last one of those copiers are. and most importantly one vendor. That eliminates labor cost, time, and money, just more waste. If this how copiers are handled, inventoried and accounted for, imagine how much other taxpayer property they are handling in a similar fashion. Institutional controls In the excerpt below the superintendent explains the problems they have had finding out this particular piece of information

LISTEN HERE  FEES AND COPIERS

This is part of the statement made by the Superintendent at the beginning of the last monthly meeting.

Karl Bruchhaus photo from the web CPSB.org

The budgets for the CPSB are submitted for audit, of the 23 budgets submitted by the present Superintendent, some prior to his appointment as Superintendent.  Of the 23 submitted 7 received the lowest possible grade, a D.  When a budget is given a D, in the comments on fraud and abuse(and may also include control, compliance, and/or management comments) Highlighted area of the 1st page below. This means that one or more of those things may be at play.

This also means that should be referred for a closer look by those who are supposed to make sure the letter of the law is followed.

The following is one of those audits.

The above information was is available at the Audit Report Library.

The Administration is asking for a new bond for capital improvements, some of the districts have bonded out already yet have no capital improvements in the mentioned schools in those districts.
A public notice has been given and citizens should show up at the Nov 14th CPSB meeting to express their feelings.  As far as the Bond Issue increasing taxes, your Constitutional Tax will increase, period.

Recording of the Meetings should be made so they can be compared to the minutes that are submitted, to make sure they truly reflect what happened in the meeting.

This is the end of Part 1 of the random thoughts on this, part 2 is forthcoming with a discussion on what constitutes a raise,  Change orders, the Bidding process, Waste, poor inventory controls and other things that you should know, but they don't want you to know. No more new taxes until transparency and accountability are in place.

 Lastly, the city of Lake Charles and Mayor Nic Hunter has started and are offering programs to help students and parents handle some of the issues students face outside the classroom, it's time for the CPSB to educate and take care of the children, as well as spend money responsibly and prudent. Just like with the Riverboat money and the taxes and bonds, the CPSB Administration sells teacher pay raises, then says "it a not reoccurring source of revenue" so they give stipends and bonuses, the same trick seems to work over and over. Use teachers to get tax increases, then renege on promises. The riverboat money is still coming in...bond issues already out, 1% sales tax for another 18 yrs performing at 30% higher than expected, there's plenty of money  and going to be plenty of money, the administration wants to do what it wants to do with it, not what it's supposed to do with it. IT'S YOUR MONEY NOT THE SUPERINTENDENTS', THE ADMINISTRATION, THE BOARD OR BUSINESS INTEREST, IT'S YOURS THE TAXPAYER.
Random thoughts about random things.

Wishing you an outstanding week, I wish for you what you wish for yourself, Peace.